


So you've decided to run away from your problems

by tothemovies (jarofactonbell)



Category: Boruto: Naruto Next Generations
Genre: Gen, LIVING UCHIHA CAN I GET AN AMEN, M/M, Modern AU, bort with glasses, boruto has a lot of aunts and uncles because he just does, boruto invented running away from his problems, he got 99 problems and all of them are mitsuki related, it is not mentioned but sakura is the hokage here, kawaki is an accurate brother okay this is true sibling dynamic, kiba and shino are married, listen i just need some good bort pining, modern high school au, nerd boruto is canon, please imagine, super self indulgent but i can't apologise for that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-18 17:55:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18254927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jarofactonbell/pseuds/tothemovies
Summary: Because he thinks nerdery isn’t asinas uncle Itachi would have him believe, because Itachi makes being smart glamorous and elegant, while Boruto is fifteen years old of awkward limb coordination and forgetting his glasses at home and tripping over his laces. He has to overcompensate all of his nerd instincts by being obnoxious, and while he is inherently loud-mouthed and exuberant, the performances he must portray take on a different edge ofhecking annoying.Truant, completely off the rail, cocky, arrogant, almost debilitating out of control. Moegi-sensei came close to clubbing him over the head so many times, and if it weren’t for the laws of this land, she would have knocked him off his high horseyears ago.





	So you've decided to run away from your problems

**Author's Note:**

> I was stuck for an AU and I wanted to read a wholesome High School AU since the start of Boruto so I made my own bread and now you all can feast on it. Any criticism about my writing are welcomed, but Nerd! Boruto is indisputable I'm not taking submissions for that.
> 
> D-1 (26/03) for Boruto Week 2019 - AU - as a birthday countdown for our favourite blonde son. I love him

Boruto woke up and found himself buried under a lot of falling papers.

It was a very bizarre and mildly threatening situation to wake up in. He could’ve suffocated in his sleep, without finding out the answers to his calculus homework. All the sheets detailed a culmination of him frantically copying out notes from reference materials he wasn’t legally allowed to cart home without express permission from a university professor and tidbits of lecture notes he smuggled home when he snuck into Hanabi’s lectures.

He picks up a piece of cascading paper off his face, squints to see what’s scribbled on it because his handwriting is God awful and he himself has trouble finding out what is going on with all of that.

It has a smattering of quotes from his literature homework and he only realises, with dawning horror, directly in time with the sun rising and kicking him in the eyeballs, that the essay is due this very morning and he, the fool, had prioritised the maths assignment due two days from now in favour of a more imminent literature essay.

Everybody in his household probably heard that crash from him rolling off the bed and sprinting to his laptop to frantically type out a subpar essay, but they’re used to it, he always does this the morning before assignments are due.

 

“So did you finish,” Kawaki asks him, chopsticks poised as weapons of mass pain infliction and not as dining utensils.

“Yes,” Boruto says, you know, like a liar.

“Did you finish to a standard that would sit well with your evergrowing mark of perfection,” his brother amends, because he’s cruel and he likes to see Boruto suffer.

“Kawaki,” Naruto sighs from behind his stack of legal papers.

“I’m exhibiting concern to my sibling,” Kawaki protests, with all the defensive tone inside his words. “He fell off the bed and broke a table, I think that’s ground for concern.”

“I think I’ll be right, thanks,” he tells his Father, the Honourable and Good. “And no thanks,” he looks pointedly at Kawaki and scraping back his chair to trudge over to the sink, pulling on gloves to finish the dishes he didn’t stack away last night.

“People who aren’t grateful won’t look attractive to their fellow peers!”

_“Go away, you git!”_

Naruto chews his chicken bites for a solid minute before he visibly recoils from the news.

 _"Why’s_ he trying to appeal to the masses? I thought that died out when he was twelve.”

“Onii-chan is weird, papa,” Himawari pats his arm in sympathy. “Finish your food. You’ll be late for work.”

She then promptly swipes his coffee from his grip and downs it all.

 

After threatening bodily harm to Kawaki - as if he could enact any of his threats in real life time, and promises Himawari that he would help her with her homework after club, he turns to school.

Shikadai is holding Chouchou down at the desk, to mostly finish her work and not snack on the pile of promising chip bags pile idly tempting her. 

“You have to finish!” Shikadai grits.

“Or else!” Inojin cheerily chimes in, idly sketching in his notebook.

“Or else, _what?”_ Boruto asks, in genuine fear. Inojin puts the fear of the Man Upstairs in people’s hearts even if they’re not religious. He’s _that_ scary.

Somehow, this entire situation looks like it had been mainly orchestrated by Inojin and because he doesn’t want to ruin his pristine reputation, he blackmailed Shikadai, the poor weak-spined bastard, to carry out his dirty deeds for him. And Inojin’s brand is very specific. He cares by exclusively being an asshole, because he’s a textbook _tsundere,_ so any thanks directed his way are swiftly deflected and unappreciated, so most people _don’t_ do it. For good reasons.

“Or else,” Inojin continues humming, drawing a very detailed outline of an Iron Maiden.

Chouchou screams, a guttural sound, and stabs the tip of her pacer into the exercise book, declaring that she’s _done._

“You know, there are circles in hell that are designated for people like you,” he slants an eye over at the spikes protruding, in excess, from the sarcophagus.

 "Not for me. I ain't Christian.”

Inojin points a pencil at him, grinning with a whole canine threatening his livelihood.

“O - okay then,” he blinks. “I'm leaving. Don't see me again.”

“Toodles, Boruto-kun ~”

He quickly book it out of there, before Inojin starts unleashing Unholy Shaggy-like Halo and kills him with 2% of his power.

 

The facts are as follow:

  * Boruto is popular
  * Boruto is popular _and_ smart at maths
  * Boruto thinks being a nerd isn’t cool
  * Boruto desperately tries to hide his smarts and plays it up to him being an absolute moron



Because he thinks nerdery isn’t as _in_ as uncle Itachi would have him believe, because Itachi makes being smart glamorous and elegant, while Boruto is fifteen years old of awkward limb coordination and forgetting his glasses at home and tripping over his laces. He has to overcompensate all of his nerd instincts by being obnoxious, and while he is inherently loud-mouthed and exuberant, the performances he must portray take on a different edge of _hecking annoying._ Truant, completely off the rail, cocky, arrogant, almost debilitating out of control. Moegi-sensei came close to clubbing him over the head so many times, and if it weren’t for the laws of this land, she would have knocked him off his high horse _years ago._

He’s dumb. He’s fifteen. He’s more annoying than his dad back when Naruto was at school and people suffered twenty different migraines in record time. He’s terrible at socialisation and only exceeds at academia, and if Sarada keeps on messing up that equation more, he’s going to have to blow his carefully crafted cover and intervene -

“You look uncomfortable,” someone notes from his left and bumps into his shoulder.

Boruto tries hard not to have feelings. _Conceal, don’t feel, don’t let them know -_

He turns, because society dictates that he has to reply and make eye contact somehow, somewhere, and _this is_ his friend. He signed a blood oath somewhere that deigned that he can ignore many many other people on this planet, but not this one. 

He turns, hearing the painful metal swing set creaks in his neck, and cranks up his Bright Dumb Blonde Smile™ at the calm presence next to him.

“Heya Mitsuki! Yeah, Salad is up at full throttle on her nerdery, I can’t stop her. Any suggestions on how to make her go faster so we can head off to class on time?”

Mitsuki unsurprisingly takes a while to process his words, and leans up all close to his face, humming softly.

“What's tan45?”

“One,” the answer comes automatic. He didn't think too much about why he was asked, and blinks in complete and utter distress when Mitsuki nudges Sarada aside and scribbles the answer into her working out.

“Don't help me out!” She had screamed indignantly. “Uzumaki, stop him!”

“You know I don't have the executive power to enact that, Haruno!” 

Mitsuki glances at his watch. “I think we're late for literature.” 

Boruto pays no mind to what Sarada had been spouting about integrity of work and the devaluing of stupid blonde maths geniuses and their stupid blue haired boyfriends -

“Okay we get it Haruno, shush!”

 

It's Sumire and Wasabi, in a scary team up of Good Cop Bad Cop enactment, that hound onto his distress signals at the small break between second and third period.

“Why am I getting targeted,” he asks nobody in particular, because these two aren't out here to save him from headaches, for _sure._

“The dumb blonde act needs to drop the curtains, stat,” Wasabi slaps a trigonometry textbook on his table.

“Where did you even pull that out from,” he squints, because they're blurry to his far-sighted eyes. Where are his stupid glasses. Did Kawaki steal them again.

“My handbag. I'm like an Asian Mary Poppins, be dazzled, Blondie, cut the crap, look me in the eye,” Wasabi slams a fist aggressively on the table. “Avoiding confrontation won't help you, Uzumaki.”

The closer she comes up to him the less he sees her so he really can't do anything besides _run_ -

His glasses descend from heaven, dropped from thin air and almost falling off his nose and Sumire has to surge forward to slap them back up onto his face.

“Oh my word he’s blind,” Wasabi marvels, absolutely floored. “The creature is without sight,” she amends, to sound closer to a David Attenborough documentary.

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, will ya,” he grumbles, tapping the sides of the frame to check for any damages because he will actually drop dead before Mother and Uncle Hyuga can drag him off to the optometrist to see how much closer to blindness his eyesight had raced to.

No damages. He can proceed with these sort of blurry lenses until the next three years or months or until Neji deems it necessary for him to fetch new glasses to ‘better your eyes’ health’. He had begged in the past, to no avail. Please, Uncle, Hyuuga Prodigal Demon Cousin, please leave me be you passed down the far-sightedness genetics I have your terrible terrible eyes.

“You didn’t mention that you need glasses,” Sumire steps back, in regrettable clarity because now he can see their mutually confused and disappointed faces.

“I didn’t see the need to,” he mulishly offers. “And they’re a hindrance for track -” 

“Sarada wears hers in judo and she did well in nationals,” Wasabi stares down in consternation at him. 

“I have reasons and they’re stupid, so I would like to not divulge them in front of people who are making me distinctly uncomfortable now, so can you please go?”

Wasabi and Sumire stare at each other.

“He has a crush,” someone giggles into his ear and he turns with too much ~~gay~~ panic in his lumbar twist to see Mitsuki perching on the table, foot resting on the back of his chair, calmly flicking through his literature homework. “I think he’s trying to impress someone.” 

 _Yeah,_ Boruto’s mind flashes, _you._

Sumire, because she can read minds now, or Boruto is carrying on his habit of talking out loud, lets out an _ahh_ and starts patting his head condescendingly, nodding as if she understands the predicament of liking someone who is a. of the same gender, b. super popular and capable and out of your league and c. your best friend whose friendship you can’t wreck.

 “We’re just here to call you out on your bullshit, so do something about it,” Wasabi also pats his head, for solidarity and for condescension. “Don’t be late for track, kiddo.”

 “It’s only _three months_ between the two of us!” He screams after her, and throwing himself back down into the chair. Mitsuki remains stubbornly on his table, scrutinising his work.

 “You write well,” the boy notes, an objective statement. “Awful handwriting though.”

 Boruto shoves him. “Get off my books.”

 

Things hit him as having _escalated_ when _the_ Uchiha Shisui from the senior side pays him a visit - partly because he values direct actions whenever students come to him with student-student disputes and partly because he is an awful gossip - and descends onto Boruto like a great octopus of benevolence and awful bed hair.

“Arg - stop doing that to my hair you know it’s bad!”

“My medium-sized duckling,” Shisui coos, never once stopping his ruthless ruffle on his hair. “Someone ran into my office and told me to stage an intervention. Who are you picking fights with now?”

 Boruto can’t help but curse Metal out inside his head. Damn him and his overt concern over Boruto’s internal Gay Panic.

 “Nobody. I actually haven’t done anything, people have just been telling me to stop being annoying, like, all day.”

 “That’s annoying,” Shisui relents his grip. “You sure you don’t have any actual problems that your superiority complex isn’t obscuring? I have seen you at your worst, you having problems isn’t going to top that.”

 “Charming, but not reassuring,” he smiles back, all fake and venomous. “Go back to your lunch, old man, I don’t have problems that I can’t solve myself.”

 Shisui only slants him a look, mostly directed to his glasses and oddly coordinated uniform - rolled up sleeves, untucked shirt, track shirt underneath pristine white school shirt, but neatly ironed slacks and vest.

“Okay duckling, I’ll see you when I see you,” Shisui pushes back, because he knows from experience that pushing some angst ridden brats about won’t result nicely or in anything less than blood and tears, plus he understands the value of space. Imagine that.

 “Tell you-know-who I said hi, Ruto!”

 He screams a little as the inheritor of the Uchiha brand of Annoying leaves through the door. He _knows._ Oh Mother’s big fancy car, he knows.

 And it dooms on him.

 Who _else_ knows?

He calls Kawaki first, because he’s not sensible and he needs his brother’s insults to ground him.

“Sheep brain,” Kawaki picks up. “You have a minute and a half.”

“How long have you known that I have Gay Feelings for my best friend?” He rushes into the phone.

“Since you were eleven, next.”

“Do my friends _know?”_

“Which of them _don’t_ know is the question you should be asking.”

“Oh my god, why am I even trying to impress them all when they know I’m a nerd.”

“Don’t ask me questions that I can’t answer, I’m not your psychologist.”

“Kawaki-chan, this is why Uncle Neji make you go to that pottery class for anger management.”

“Your minute’s up. I’m going. Don’t call me again.”

“Oi,” he says, and pauses. “Do you think he uh, will like me back.”

Kawaki doesn’t sigh, which is a big step, but he probably did it inside his head. 

“Ask him yourself, and don’t ask other people for answers that a specific source can give you for. Goodbye now you little shit, leave me to scream about my academia in agony.”

 

Which is why he is properly changed, gym shoes on, glasses still sitting on his face, and waiting for Mitsuki to finish off changing.

Mitsuki emerges, blinking as to Boruto’s rare punctuality, and offers a lazy and habitual fist bump, in which Boruto returns without thinking, his hand remembering the motion. They start heading to gym 7, just before the track field, where they’ll split. 

“Hey Boruto.”

“Yeah?”

“Remember our game?” 

“Which? There are a lot.” 

Mitsuki stretches, long lean lines of muscle aligning themselves under his leotard. Boruto mindfully doesn’t stare as his friend starts his warmups. 

“If I come first, you answer my question. If you come first, I answer yours. We made it in confidence that we can’t bag a first place each.”

Boruto hears a ticking inside his ears and under his ribs.

“What’s your question?”

 “That’s cheating,” Mitsuki points out. “And that would count as your question in the case that you do win.”

 “We can just not play the game and -”

 “And what, Boruto,” Mitsuki’s eyes are hard, nothing in them with the light and fun _his_ Mitsuki has. “If there is no wager, there is no way for you to tell me anything. Heavens know if you are even truthful with me right this moment.”

 Caught and called out, Boruto debates the feasibility of lying and being truthful. Lots of cons on either side, but talking to his uncle and brother, along with Sarada offering him a rare pat on the head and a whispered _Don’t be stupid,_ must have done something to his nervous system, because he stares right ahead, okay, not at Mitsuki, and tells the baseball fence - 

“So I’ve been trying to maintain a bad boy image to impress you for the last couple of years because you stopped being super affectionate with me and that made me insecure, and I’m just trying to cope by lying to myself and everyone around me.” 

Mitsuki doesn’t say anything. Granted, what _can_ he say when he’s thrown a curveball like that? 

“Uh wha -” 

“Ha ha funny look at the time I have to go,” he flees, looking every bit like it, and doesn’t bother with his farewell.

He’s going to call Shino and cry two rivers about his woeful love life. Then when he’s less weepy will he call Hanabi and Tenten to report on his mistakes and weakness and will prepare a ten step plan to further improve himself as a person of less feelings and more academia competence.

 “Boruto!” He hears distinctly. “Wait!”

 

Shikadai and Inojin didn’t even bother with asking what’s wrong. They jumped right into the midst of his weepy episode.

“So did he reject you,” Inojin lobs a tennis ball and misses, but Boruto highly doubts he was even aiming at the first place.

 “He didn’t say anything,” he squints out into the sun-glared field. “I kinda ran away.”

 Shikadai grunts something that sounds like _Typical_ and doesn’t even bother with masking his disappointment when Boruto turns around to protest at the unjust physical harassment he’s subjected to under the demon duo.

“You were making us worry, brat,” Shikadai shakes his head, fixing his _hakama._ “And you’re blowing it out of proportions.”

“And nobody was buying your Bad Boy act, let’s be real,” Inojin chimes in and skips away, waving a dainty goodbye. “You suck at lying!”

 “Go back to your running, stupid clown boy, and don’t run when Mitsuki picks you up,” Shikadai threatens, even faintly picking up his not-there bow to aim at him. “Don’t make my friend cry.”

 “I’m your friend too?”

 “I don’t claim idiots as friends,” is all he gets before Shikadai too walks away.

 

Predictably, he does a runner the first chance he gets, and seeing as he had unfortunately made himself a target of concern for the various adults who regularly drop in on his life to check that he’s still sane, living and not actively trying to self-destruct as a direct consequence to their guidance, home is not a great idea. Father would be at home and attempting to cook before Kawaki and Himawari elbow him out of the way to put out the fire in the kitchen. Mother will be late - he got a text from her, she has a conference to run and nag at executives, with uncle Neji glowering on the side - so she will be home late. 

He could potentially run to Itachi’s place, but then Shisui would be at home and mocking him. He can’t show his face to Hanabi before solving all of those antiderivative questions _and_ Tenten would still be training Metal and Rock Lee. Karin lives too far. He can’t show his face in a home with _Sarada_ in it that’s where Mitsuki will be in.

The only viable home is at Kiba’s. Even if he isn’t home, Shino will be. They’re chill, non-intrusive relatives. They don’t ask about his love life or a lack of it. There are dogs, and bugs, and animals don’t ask you complicated life questions.

“Hey goldie,” Kiba picks up. “You coming over?”

“Please provide asylum for one under imminent persecution,” he mutters as he furtively glances the coast of the quiet Aburame district and ducks under a tamarind tree, its leaves obscuring him from vision. 

“Hold on, hey Shino, c’mere for a minute, Matsuo here is having a lot of moments, help him out -” the phone is shuffled along, and Shino’s voice comes on. 

“Hello, Matsuo-san.” 

“I wrote _one_ haiku -”

“And it was great. And very Edo-esque. How can I help? Also, why is Sarada looking for you?” 

He spares a moment to curse Sarada and her bloodhound nose for sniffing out the drama her fellow friends brew and get embroiled in. 

“Nothing. Is she over at yours?” 

“She’s leaving ours. Her and Mitsuki. They’re close to that tamarind tree that you all used to play under -” 

Oh why why _why -_  

“Boruto, are you trying to run away? Don’t - oh hey Mitsuki.”

He freezes, because fight or flight were battling it out and apparently _freeze_ won out. 

“You stand there and you wait for me, you hear that, Hyuga Uzumaki? You stay and wait. I’m giving you my answer.”

 “Uh -” 

“I don’t appreciate it when people I want to return confessions to run away. It’s terrible grace.” 

And then he hangs up.

 

Boruto should be running away, he can and his brain is telling him to. But this is _his_ Mitsuki - the one that was about to board a plane off to some foreign country because he was trying to find meaning to his existence and Boruto dragged his ass back to Konoha because they can find meaning here, with each other. 

So the truth might have dawned onto his stupid broad forehead when Mitsuki appears from around the street corner, heaving breath from inside his lungs. 

“Suki -” 

“Moron,” Mitsuki tells him, taking a step and another. “When have I stopped being yours in these four years we spend together? Why do you need to lie unnecessarily?” 

Boruto breaks into a sprint, running directly at his moon. 

“I have been inconceivably yours, from the moment we meet and until we cease to remember our own names, I am yours.”

 

(Kiba screams at them to _Go inside or go home I’m making food and it’s hard to know what to cook when you two idiots keep running all over the place._  

Sarada had leant out the window and tell Mitsuki _Ah yes you caught the trout,_ and told Boruto that he’s dumb and deserves to be scaled and filleted for dinner. 

Shino shushes both of them and herds Mitsuki and Boruto inside, so that they’re fed and can continue this when hunger isn’t fuelling their collective anger to an exponential level.)

 

The rest, as the saying goes, is history. 

Nobody cares that he turns up pristinely dressed - Kawaki did, but Kawaki lives in true faith to Sibling Mockery That Doubles As Love, along with his initial jolt of surprise that prompted an impromptu Skype call to Shikadai to exorcise the demon possessing Boruto. As for everyone else, they nod as if they too didn’t buy the Popular White Instagram Supreme Merch Boy image he was projecting. 

That’s a bit offensive. 

As for the whole Mitsuki debacle, well - let’s just say the reactions are too exaggerated.

Himawari sends a flower crown (or five) to Mitsuki, welcoming him to the family. Sarada takes great delight in screaming _Daylight rules_ whenever they walk with her and the teachers separate the two of them when they huddle together - it’s not feasible to do anything in front of everyone else _okay_ what _can_ they do, gayly hold hands and profess their gay love to each other publicly? 

Ridiculous. 

There is one change though. Apparently, Namida and Chouchou had been shoving Mitsuki into Netflix movies one after another, that one day, Boruto is standing near Kawaki’s class and proofing over his brother’s work, that a hand slips into his back pocket and he jumps, turning around to scream at the offender of such public display of harass - 

Mitsuki stares intently at his reaction, and retracts a hand. 

That’s not a harasser. Or a potential prankster.

“What was that,” he asks, closing Kawaki’s book. 

“Affection.”

 “Disgusting,” he pushes back his glasses. “Do it again.” 

Mitsuki tries hard not to grin into his hair when he dips down to give Boruto his Prescribed Morning Kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> pLease find me on social media i am always and fully a weeb: [twitter](https://twitter.com/tacobell_com), [curious cat](https://curiouscat.me/jenny_benny) and [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/tacomakers-central)


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